Tuesday, 26 February 2013

She's sitting there, huffing and puffing away as I do a little research (i.e. googling!) and reading Microsoft tech documents. This is the kind of user who expects you to instantly know the solution to the millions of different possible IT problems that exist.

I start explaining the reason why the error message. She starts to moan and moan. Jeez, I'm helping her here and she nags me like this.

I have to actually cut her down a little, and asset myself.

Finally, I explain what she can do. The problem is not a bug, but is actually caused by an interaction between her and her co-worker. It is to do with the settings that they are each using. There is no other solution other than this modified way of working.

The whole time she has been nagging me about needing to get this done by today and as I leave she says something like "well, it will have to wait till tomorrow" because her co-worker won't return till tomorrow. In a blaming type tone.

As if it is my fault. Jeez, some users are so unappreciative. I went down there to help her, she expects a miracle solution and blames me when she doesn't get one. This user is on my shit list for sure!

Let me add further why such attitudes annoy me. When someone huffs and puffs almost in your face, doesn't thank you, sees you as having failed them when you did your best - they are treating you like dirt, like a slave. They would never treat anyone else like this. They would not treat non-IT co-workers like this. I talked about this earlier here: Being Treated Like A Slave In IT Support.

It's a nasty attitude to have and such people are forever on my shit list.

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Our server ran out of space and we couldn't find this. You have to add a Feature via Server Manager called "Desktop Experience". It requires a reboot.

We managed to clear out a folder called "winsxs" in the Windows folder. It contained a ton of updates. You shouldn't go deleting files manually out of here but instead use a tool, here's the command I ran:

This isn't really an IT problem per se but I do a lot of work in Excel and knowing a few tricks can save you a hell of a lot of time.

I am making a report and there are multiple fields that look the same in Active Directory. But in actual fact, we have two that usually are identical except for when someone changes name (e.g. getting married) we only change the one of them.

Now I went and created a report and put in the wrong column. I needed another column. So I wanted to find out where they did not match i.e. the exceptions when someone has had a name change.

To compare two columns that contains strings (text), you can use the exact function:

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

I had a PC recently that kept looping at startup. I would see the Dell screen and then just a blinking cursor, white on black for a second, and then back to the Dell startup scree...again and again and again.

I ran the diagnostic and nothing was wrong with the PC, including the hard disk.

I suspected it may not be a drive failure at all but something to do with the partition.

I put a Windows 7 install disc in to see how Windows would display the hard disk - would it show the partitions?

But Windows 7 asked to "Install" and I didn't want to risk it. I was tempted to click "Repair" but didn't know which (32 or 64 bit) Windows was installed on the machine.

At this point, I was instead going to use Hiren's or Ultimate Boot CD to run TestDisk and view (and possibly repair) the partition table. But upon rebooting, the machine went straight into Windows 7, it was fixed!

Seems that the Windows disc automatically repaired the MBR or partition table on the hard disk without even asking me!

Friday, 15 February 2013

So here we build machines using Norton Ghost images saved on a removable hard disk.

Now I only went to use fdisk to erase the partitions on the system disk in the PC and went and wiped out the entire removable disk too!

I broke a sweat! Up to 2TB of images down the pan!

If you've come here and done the same then this is the tool for you. I looked around, some are paid, some are horribly outdated, but this baby does the trick and it's free: TestDisk.

Just download and run it, it's pretty self-explanatory. It basically detects any connected disks and then you can run a quick search for partitions. It found the one I had deleted and then I wrote the new partition back to the drive. edit: here is a great tutorial with screenshots.

All appears to be fine. I won't know until the disk owner returns though! But so far, this tool, TestDisk looks to have been a life saver.

Thursday, 14 February 2013

It's true that I'm very sensitive to how people treat me (what they say, their attitude etc.). I sense the meaning in everything that people do, I'm a very justice orientated person and believe in being treated fairly. This is definitely not the job for me.

Today was typical of how some users can be.

I built a laptop for someone, put on Windows 7 and tons of drivers and apps, took me half a day.

I took the laptop to them this morning and said "here's your laptop, let's run through it" and she said "oh, can you wait 10 minutes".

You see, people treat IT like we are waiting staff. Like we should wait on them till they're ready. It's a master-slave attitude and I hate it. And at the same time, we must normally dress like white collar workers, while still getting paid barely a touch above blue collar wages.

Friday, 1 February 2013

Windows lets you connect with only 2 admin licenses to a server and 1 to a desktop.

If you connect with the same username, it will disconnect the other person. But if you connect with a different username and the other person has disconnected without logging off then the system won't let you on.

UNLESS you disconnect the session remotely. There are two ways to do it.

First way is to use the command line, programs query.exe to view the sessions and reset.exe to kill them (sometimes also known as qwinsta.exe and rwinsta.exe).